Well fuck it, I don't have time for that. Can't afford to wait another month, need this PC right now, might as well go all the way.

Ordered full EKWB water loop with their revised cpu block. I pondered Heat Killer IV but apparently the revised block is on same level so I'll keep it as single order.

This will be fun guys ;- ) Dual radiator setup...

Wowwww...what a machine that will be. You said you are building it for Veronika in your office? How long before you steal it...or build a duplicate for yourself ;-)

Yeah this one is hers :- ) I already built the i9 7980XE few months ago, although with bit disappointing thermals despite delid.

Btw, regarding the CPU vs GPU and ease of adding GPUs, you currently can't have both easily. All the hardcore boards like MSI-MEG coming up are 3-way SLI, like the makers didn't know SLI is dead and NVLink comes in pairs ?To get the best out of NVLink with RTX cards, you can only use two or four cards to memory pool because three of them will have the third card lower the whole memory pool back to single card.

So if someone is thinking of going GPU in the future, think about this and buy motherboard that can actually take 4 dual-slot GPUs. MSI-MEG can't. So much for 500 Euro boards :- ).

I myself am pondering if it's finally the time for GPU rendering to make full on break-through. Pascal + RT Cores for performance, NVLink on consumer cards for double memory (2x2080ti=22GB Vram, a lot !!).I can't wait for Vlado's publishing once NDA for RTX falls in September and see how the battle between VrayGPU and others will go.

But you're absolutely right about the ease. You could now build 4x2080ti Workstation (although for the same price you could build 8x1080ti...) which with pooled Vram would be like ultimate render-farm in one single case. It would be 8k euro machine but for what you would get in performance, everything in CPU world would pale in comparison. I can't even imagine those 1 minute renders in Redshift :- )

Corsair Vengeance 3000 CL15 64(4x16). It's not Ryzen or TR specific, but it was like the only 4x16x3000+ tested on the QVL list :- ). Also, got it for 680 Euro of Amazon, which is lot better than the TR specific sets currently going for 1000 +/- Euros (funny enough, MSI didn't even test them for QVL... )

Yes, exactly! If VRay would only push the usability a little bit...material preview, VFB2, lightmix, LUT opacity slider. It’s the little things that have been promised for so long, but man they make a difference day-to-day in Corona.

There is not a single another copy in whole mainland Europe. Nowhere. So another two weeks. What a failed start for Threadripper. No boards, no coolers.

At least my EKWB loop came. I can build it and look how it cools nothing :- )

Seriously, look at this. Next time send gtx 1020 for 30 euros instead of RTX 2080ti because both are called "nVidia" on box.

Ah, that sucks! Depending on your need and timeframe, you might have luck finding a Taichi in the meantime and flash the Bios to be compatible. I have one and like it and I believe it can overclock the 2990wx. Assuming your RAM is on the QVL list of course. Just a thought, probably not worth it.

I will stick with MSI for now but only because I would like to have the phase support it offers. Taichi offers 8+3 which I am not that confident in.

Then there is Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme x399 with 10+3 phases. Better, but far cry from MSI. But it supports quad-GPU and has on board 10gbe, saving one pci-e slot.Hmm, might look into it to see how stable it is under overclocking but I think there were like zero useful reviews of it because almost nobody got a copy.

Edit: Ok, great review by Kitguru guy. Still, that board is not available either :- D I found single copy in whole Europe from shop which doesn't send outside of Germany. Great.I will wait for the MSI, what else.

I will stick with MSI for now but only because I would like to have the phase support it offers. Taichi offers 8+3 which I am not that confident in.

Then there is Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme x399 with 10+3 phases. Better, but far cry from MSI. But it supports quad-GPU and has on board 10gbe, saving one pci-e slot.Hmm, might look into it to see how stable it is under overclocking but I think there were like zero useful reviews of it because almost nobody got a copy.

Edit: Ok, great review by Kitguru guy. Still, that board is not available either :- D I found single copy in whole Europe from shop which doesn't send outside of Germany. Great.I will wait for the MSI, what else.

(PS: Sorry for the "edit tag"...)

I was just about to send that review. I knew I had seen people giving it good marks with the 2990wx. Bummer about the availability. For future build I can highly recommend the board. I'm in the states so Newegg\Amazon are my go-to's when it comes to stuff. Depending on 2080Ti benchmarks, etc. and if I decide to upgrade to a 2990wx I may or may not upgrade my mainboard. I'm thinking of not upgrading and even just seeing how my Noctua does. Keep costs as low as possible. Or I just build a new system...not like I can get much for my 1950x now.

Leo just published review of the MSI board and it really is class of its own in terms of hardware. He even goes on to say OC (manual) on this board would be foolish since you can just up the watt cap and let it do its job.He criticizes rightly the shit RGB all over and no 10GBe but that fades out.

So for the 32c 2990WX it doesn't look like any board is even remotely close.

Interesting review by Leo on the MEG, you can spot me in the comments asking about RAM haha. Pretty much sealed it for me for getting the MSI board seeing as the Asus and Gigabyte's VRM's were going over 100c when overclocking.

Any reason you went with the EK block vs something like the heatkiller one that topped out HardOCP's charts? To be fair though, I haven't seen any comparisons of the revised EK block - got any links to hand?

I'm still getting my head around how to go about setting up the loop (where to place fill/drain ports e.t.c). I'm really liking the look of this case for watercooling: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lian-li-pc-o11-dynamic-midi-tower-white-window-ca-76t-ll.html - I could set up a max of 3 radiators in it comfortably, and has mounting space for the pump/reservoir. I'm thinking of including some quick discconect fittings for the 2nd or 3rd rad so that I can add in a 2080ti later on (it looks like it's going to be a toasty beast due to the die size).

*Edit* if you manage to figure out how to order that Silver Arrow heatsink do let me know how as I might get it as a backup option in case I run into any issues with the loop.

Yeah, the other boards do look like no-go for overclocking due to how overtheated the VRMs become.

The EK vs Heatkiller IV. I found comparison of revised EK to XSCP Raystorm which as you know is identical in performance to HK IV. So basically the takeaway was that HK IV=XSCP RS=Revised EK.So for simplicity, best look, single invoice order, and better warranty (if you build the whole loop from single brand, they can't complain if something goes wrong) I went with the newest EK.

My loop will be extremely simple. 360 on top, 280 in front (the reason for not another 360 is because it's real struggle to access the top ports in Define as they get too close to each other), Pump/Reservoir combo mounted in front of front 280 rad as well as fill port.I stayed with simple Define R6 as I like all boxes to look the same :- ). I only buy Fractal.

I`m going for same build as you Juraj. I`m just patiently waiting for couple more weeks for additional components reviews(coolers), but for now it seems i stick with Aorus extreme. My main workload is FX in Houdini and rendering in Vray/Redshift with heavy GPU usage. Aorus have better PCI slots arrangements for me. I use 3 GPUs. I use 10Gbit network at home from my slave machines and NAS. PCIe setup with Aorus works great. With MSI , there is no 10Gb nic and PCIe slots arragement on MSI will not allow for 3GPUs(2 slot each) + 10Gb PCIe card.

For the RAM,i need 128GB. MSI QVL list for 128GB, pretty much no choices. But i found multiple kits from G.Skill that works with both MSI and Aorus. Just check here if you missed it

MSI looks great on VRMs, but that`s pretty much it. If i can do 5000-5400 Cinebench on Aorus fine with me. To be able to get to additional 5500-6000 it`s getting really expensive with any board. Power consumption, custom loop cooling, better rams, not mentioning sitting in room with 1KW heating all the time. My conclusion is that the stretch for another 5-7% performance is not worth the trouble/expenses/comfort.

Hi Peter ! :- ) What a pleasant surprise to have legend like you here.

Absolutely agree with your choices. If we were using GPU rendering I would absolutely go for the Aorus instead. Lot more reasonable layout and better board overall. Since the most we're gonna dabble in GPU rendering for now might be Unreal engine, I think two GPU's will have to suffice. Even if we were to fully swap to GPU rendering in future (in year or two) I don't think either of us would install more than 2 GPUs at once since I would still like to offload that to our farm (where I can still fit 4 full GPUs onto each of our many xeon machines).

Could you not fit 3 GPUs + 1 Ethernet card by fitting the GPUs in the top first, and the lowest two and the Ethernet card into third from top under the top GPU ?Still, I would not go for 3-slot only board for GPU rendering. MSI did really strange choice here.

The MSI is strange board and I openly admit I do plan to buy it purely for the phases with some reservations. But our workflow right now is 99perc. Corona so why not get the most out of it if I can is the whole philosophy.

I did check the G.Skill QVL as well, but when I did that the MSI MEG wasn't even there yet and for other MSI boards there it was super limited.I originally wanted to get 64 GB to keep the costs reasonable but now that I went all out with watercooling, I might swap to 128 as well.

For what it's worth, some local e-shops show the Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme x399 for order, but with shipping time 15-19 september. Soo, not much sooner.It's almost like MSI and Gigabyte don't want the free advertising such extreme builds bring for them :|

For what it's worth, some local e-shops show the Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme x399 for order, but with shipping time 15-19 september. Soo, not much sooner.It's almost like MSI and Gigabyte don't want the free advertising such extreme builds bring for them :|

I would say it's almost like they just don't want to sell any of those two boards at all :- ).

Truth be told I would go with Aorus since I like it more, but now that I have all this cooling, I have to stick with the overclocking board :- ).

Still, this is baffling. Selling boards and coolers two months after selling the CPUs ?